City of Golden Shadow by Tad Williams

Millions of commercial nodes blinked, shimmied, rainbowed, and sang, doing their best to separate customers from credits. The intricate web of virtual thoroughfares surged with sims of every visual type, every level of complexity. "It is a huge place," she said, "but remember that most people never bother with high-level overviews like the one we just had-they just travel directly to wherever it is they want to go. If you tried to visit every node on the net, or even just every node in this Mall . . . well, it would be like trying to call every single address in the Greater Beijing Directory. Even all these-" she indicated the crush of sims moving around them in endless parade, "-are just a tiny fraction of the people who are using the Mall right now. These are just the folk who want to have the visual experience of browsing and people-watching."
    "The visual experience?" !Xabbu's gray simuloid swiveled to watch a flock of Fumes push through the crowd, cartoon-voluptuous females with animal heads.
    "Like you're doing now. There's plenty to see. But it's much faster just to go directly to what you want. When you're using the regular computer interface, do you read the name of every file in storage?"
    !Xabbu was slow to respond. The Putties had met a pair of snake-headed men and were going through an elaborate ritual greeting which featured a great deal of sniffing. "Go to what I want?"
    "I'll show you. Let's say we want to . . . I don't know, buy a new data pad. Well, if you know where the electronics district is, you could go there directly and then physically move around-people spend a lot of money trying to make their commercial nodes attractive, just like in the real world. But let's say you don't even know where the district is."
    He had turned to face her. His gray face with its vestigial features caused her a moment of anxiety. She missed his animation, his smile: this was like traveling with a scarecrow. Of course, she herself must not look any more pleasant. "But it's true," he said. "I do not know where the electronics district is."
    "Right. Look, you've spent a lot of time in the past few weeks learning to find your way around the basic computer setup. The only difference here is that you're inside the computer-or apparently so."
    "It is hard to remember that I have a real body, and that it is back at the Polytechnic-that I am still in the Polytechnic."
    "That's the magic." She made her voice smile since she couldn't do much with her face. "Now, do a search."
    !Xabbu moved his fingers slowly. A glowing blue orb appeared in front of him.
    "Good." Renie took a step closer. "No one can see that but you and me-that's part of our interaction with our own computer at the Poly. But we're going to use our computer to access the Mall's service directory." She showed him the procedure. "Go ahead and bring up the list. You can do voice commands, too, either offline, where no one will hear them but you, or online. If you keep an eye open here to the Mall, you'll see lots of people talking to themselves. They might just be crazy-there are more than a few-but they may also be talking to their own systems and not bothering to keep it private."
    The orb spat out a list of services, which hovered in midair as lines of fiery blue letters. Renie adjusted the list to sunset red, more readable against the background, then pointed at those listed under Electronics. "There you go. 'Personal access devices.' Click it"
    The world immediately changed. The open spaces of the Mall's public area were replaced by a long wide street. The simulated buildings on either side loomed high into the false sky, each one a riot of color and movement, the outside displays as colorful and competitive as tropical flowers. And we're the bees, she thought to herself, with pollen credits to spread around. Welcome to the information jungle. She rather liked the metaphor. Maybe she would use it in one of her lectures.
    "Now," she said aloud, "if you had found a